


A First for Everything

by DabblesInCrayon



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Family fun fights, Family fun fluff, Family fun fluff again
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-19 22:10:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14882153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DabblesInCrayon/pseuds/DabblesInCrayon
Summary: STATUS: ON HIATUS------It's Ciri's first visit to their estate. You betcherass they're gonna show her a good time - provided they can stay out of each other's way.Full of family bonding, shameless fluff, and my favorite theme of all: old people growing up.A post-TW3 B&W thingy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I've reimagined Geralt to be a teensy bit more in touch with his sentimental side as a retired and landed gentleman. Hope it's not OoC.
> 
> \------
> 
> STATUS: ON HIATUS

An almost-violent shift in the flow of magic on the estate made Yennefer shoot out of her chair. She whipped her head about the room and, despite being its only occupant, announced, “She’s here!” It was a day earlier than planned which took her off guard a little, but that also made it all the more exciting. She felt her heart racing and smiled at her own soppiness; wasn’t this type of melodrama the exact thing she ridiculed in her bad romance novels?

From above, she heard Geralt’s hurried movements as he needlessly fluffed the pillow and smoothed the plaid on the guest bed for the umpteenth time. True, she didn’t see him do any of this, but if she knew her witcher – and she did – there was no doubt that he was excessively fussing over Ciri’s room yet again.

And why wouldn’t he, for her first visit?

It had been months since Yennefer had come to call Corvo Bianco home, which meant it’d been over a year since Ciri had left Geralt on the Path. And although the wayward witcheress had stayed in touch via kestrel-delivered letters during that time, their correspondence had been frustratingly infrequent – especially for Geralt and his impatience over all things Ciri. (“This is all she wrote, Yen?” “Where is she now, Yen?” “What does she mean, ‘Talk soon’, Yen? _How_ soon?”) When the girl’d finally sent word that she would be making her way down south for a visit, Geralt had spent the next few days fluctuating between grinning uncontrollably and fretting over the details of Ciri’s stay. During the times when Yennefer wasn’t busy teasing him for turning soft in his old age, she’d been just as preoccupied with planning the visit. They’d put poor Barnabas-Basil through hell-and-a-day to make the estate a place where Ciri might consider spending an extended time at, and even now, the work wasn’t finished.

But there was no mistaking the magical disturbance. From the intensity of it, it seemed Ciri had found herself somewhere in the vineyard. She’d likely deposit Kelpie in the stables first, which meant they only had a few minutes before she started wondering where they were.

“Geralt, come down!” she called up a little more loudly than strictly necessary. “We should be out there to greet her.”

“She’s a day early!” he shouted down.

“And is seeing her earlier a bad thing?”

“Of course not. But…” There was the sound of some ruffling, then a loud, “Shit!”

“What now?” She cocked a hand on her hip.

“Her pajamas,” he complained. “Haven’t laid them out yet. Where’d you put them?”

Her lips quirked, torn between turning upwards in amusement and tightening into an irritated line. “We can find them later, love. She shan’t be needing them until bedtime anyway. More important that we be there to greet her properly. Now come down, please,” she finished in a tone that suggested “please” was less of a request than an absolute command.

It took a few moments for Geralt’s face to materialize in the threshold, sporting furrowed brows and large anxious eyes.

“Well?” she prodded. “Are we ready to go?”

He looked like he was holding his breath when he answered, “I guess,” and dragged his feet towards her. She reached out and slipped her hand into his large palm to tug him on, but he suddenly stopped and turned himself into a dead weight, jerking her off balance. She shot him a stern look. “Just wanted it to be perfect when she got here,” he mumbled in response.

She rolled her eyes. He sounded so pitiful that she would’ve counted herself heartless to deny him anything at the moment. “Is surprising her with a nightdress really so important to you?”

He threw a hopeful glance at her. “Back on the Path, she always used to complain about sleeping in the same clothes she fought in. Thought this’d be a nice way to show her I was listening. Don’t you agree?”

Heavens help her. She would never admit this to anybody under any amount of duress, but the way he was looking at her now – so earnest and worried and stupidly adorable – he could’ve had anything he asked of her.

Though not before she made a grand show of sighing. “Fine, Witcher. Go fetch her sleepwear and lay it out on her bed. It should be in one of our dressers. I’ll buy you some time, but hurry!”

He buried his lips in her hair before dashing towards their bedroom, throwing a “Thanks, Yen! You’re the best!” over his shoulder.

“And don’t you forget it,” she tutted to his retreating backside (while perhaps admiring it just a little, too).

Turning back to the task at hand, she stepped out of the house and allowed her eyes a moment to adjust to the Toussaint rays before scanning the courtyard below.

And there she was, a splash of emerald and ashen beaming so brightly the sun seemed dull in comparison. The sight of the girl brought a smile to Yennefer's face.

“My daughter,” she breathed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry. You'll see why soon enough.

Ciri stood there grinning like a fool. She couldn’t help it; after that long on the Path with nobody to converse with but her garkain trophy (and those talks were generally pretty one sided), it was like a balm to be here with her…her _them_.

Except she was only able to see one of them. Yennefer was standing on the terrace waving her over, but Geralt was nowhere to be sighted. Gods, she hoped they weren’t in a row again; after all of the lifetimes of crap they’d all been through, wasn’t it high time they finally found some peace?

She slipped a copper to the stable boy, patted Kelpie on the haunch, and stepped briskly across the courtyard. Her curiosity was piqued by just about everything she laid eyes on – did they really own these stables, and that armory, and those grapevines, and did these people truly all work for them, and _were they raising chickens_? – but she kept her amazement at bay for now.

Because there was a very powerful sorceress quickly descending on her.

“Welcome home, my dear.” Yennefer met her halfway down the steps and folded Ciri into her arms. 

“Thank you. Ouch! You’re squeezing me!”

Yennefer chuckled without loosening her embrace. “You’ve fended off beasts and bad guys your entire adult life without complaint and yet a little squeeze causes you to yelp?”

“It’s different with you.” She smiled and returned the hug. “I’ve missed you.” She felt one of Yennefer’s hands run down her hair. “Where’s Geralt?”

Yennefer pulled back to get a better look at her, and Ciri thought she saw something in her features she couldn’t quite identify – though she could’ve sworn she’d seen it somewhere before. “He’s-”

“Right here." Her heart jumped at the unmistakable gravel of his voice. "Good to see you, Ciri.” 

“Geralt!” She extricated herself from Yennefer to wrap her arms around Geralt’s neck. He patted her awkwardly on the back a few times before letting her go. “Nice of you to finally show up,” she ribbed.

“Oh, you know me. Just saving the best for last.”

Yennefer rolled her eyes at him as he feigned surrender and mouthed the word _joking_ , then turned her focus to Ciri. “Would you like a tour of the estate now, Ciri, or would you prefer to have some tea first?”

“Tour – no contest. You can’t imagine the number of questions I have for the two of you.”

“Oh, but I can, daughter.” Yennefer ushered them back down the steps, threading through the throng of chickens in the courtyard. “I’d wager it’s roughly the same number of questions I had when I first arrived.”

“Didn’t ask me any of those questions, Yen.”

“I couldn’t be sure you knew the answers yourself, Geralt.”

He puffed out his chest at her and donned his most cocksure grin. “Try me.”

“Alright. How many people work for us, and for how long will the duchy continue footing their bill until we inherit their payroll?”

Ciri could see the cogs turning in his head before he came up empty. “You got me, Yen. Never thought about that one before.”

“Shocker.” Yennefer shook her head at him but they exchanged a smirk that betrayed a camaraderie she hadn’t seen in these two before, bringing a smile to her face as she watched on. She drew a breath to ask one of her own questions when Geralt suddenly threw an arm in front of her, nearly knocking her off her feet.

“Watch out! Don’t step on Hennefer!”

Ciri caught herself, teetered back to balance, and blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?” From the corner of her eye she noticed Yennefer glaring daggers at him.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you like that,” he offered. “Just that you almost stepped on Hennefer.”

Ciri stared at him, still not comprehending. “What are you on about, Geralt?”

Yennefer cut in, her voice dangerously low. “This charmer here had a bit to drink one night and fancied himself a real knee-slapper. But I swear, witcher, name another animal after me and see where else you get slapped.”

The situation started to dawn on Ciri, and she risked a glance at her feet. Sure enough, standing before her was a black-feathered hen with white accents, angrily clucking away with its beak high in the air. She looked back between Geralt and Yennefer and felt the blood drain from her face as fear for his life began to take purchase. In fact, she was certain she felt static issuing off of Yennefer’s person. “Are you out of your bloody mind, old man?” she breathed without a hint of exaggeration.

“Nah. Hennefer here is the spitting image of Yen, don’t you think?” Ciri wanted to smack some sense into him before Yennefer did far worse; the sorceress’s palms were definitely crackling now. “Prettiest hen we’ve got, and here, look why she didn’t get out of your way.”

Why it didn’t get out of her way? Praying it wouldn’t be the last time she saw him alive, Ciri tore her eyes away from Geralt and followed his gestured hand. Behind the offending hen, she saw a baby chick with a deformed leg that she likely would’ve stepped on had it not been for Geralt and Ye- _Hen_ nefer. She shook her head in disbelief.

“See? And that’s not even her baby. She just takes care of him because that’s who she is, our Hennefer.” He looked to the hen's namesake and Ciri saw a rare spot of tenderness in his eyes, but Yennefer remained a statue.

“That’s the reason you named that thing after me?”

“Didn’t I tell you the other night?”

“No. You merely pointed to it, slurred, ‘That’s Hennefer’, and proceeded to guffaw like a drunken idiot.”

Geralt had the decency to scratch his head sheepishly. “Yeah, sounds like me. Sorry. But that's why she’s named after you - you’re cut from the same cloth.” He made to drape an arm over her but she swept it off.

“If you think that’s some sort of compliment, you are deranged.” Yennefer walked ahead in a huff. Geralt started to follow after her but Ciri stopped him short.

“Are you off your rocker,” she hissed, “or do you simply not enjoy having your bollocks attached anymore?”

“Neither?”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Geralt, if you truly wish to build a life together, you can’t jest with Yennefer like that,” she explained as if he had the emotional literacy of a rock. “She’ll not calm down for days now.”

He fixed her with a surprisingly serious look. “You underestimate Yen. She’ll forgive me before dinner’s even served.”

“Are you two coming?” Yennefer called back, her tone still stiff.

“You’d better hope you’re right, old man,” she said with no confidence at all before resuming her pace, resentful of the prospect that she’d be spending her entire visit playing peacekeeper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hennefer has been clucking around in my head for ages, and I finally caved and let her out.
> 
> Hope she didn't weird you out as much as she did me the first time =)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for making it this far. More to come soon-ish. In the meantime, feel free to leave some words n' stuff.


End file.
